I was thinking about organizational culture recently, and noticed an interesting parallel. Actions such as eating healthy foods, exercising and getting enough sleep all boost our individual immune systems. What actions can we take to boost our ethicalimmunesystems? And how could doing that help us create more ethical organizations?

Building a healthy ethical culture where people take steps to protect ethics and reputation takes intentional effort. It requires regular attention, similar to the way we must eat healthy foods and exercise daily to maintain our individual health.

An ethical organizational culture doesn’t just “happen” without leadership support. To support the overall ethical health of your organization, I recommend taking these 5 important leadership actions (and avoiding the corresponding DON’TS that undo the positive effects of ethical immunity).

1. DO Intentionally Ground Every Aspect Of Your Culture in Positive Ethical Values

(DON’T Leave ethics vague and just expect people to “do the right thing”)

2. DO Clarify Exactly What Ethical Leadership Looks Like in Action

(DON’T give people ethical guidelines and leave them to figure out how to apply them to their ethical challenges)

3. DO Provide Resources For Ethical Thinking and Decision Making

(DON’T assume that people can make sense out of highly complex situations and choose the most ethical choices)

4. DO Create a Safe Environment For Talking About Ethical Challenges and Questions

(DON’T let the conversations happen only in ethics training – that’s not where people struggle with getting ethics right)

5. DO Model Ethical Leadership From The Top Down*

(DON’T Exempt the CEO and Senior Leadership from accountability for ethical leadership)

*Failure to model ethical leadership at the highest levels of leadership is a common problem, and it destroys ethical immunity.

For more guidance on ethical culture building, see these related articles:

Respectful behavior makes it possible for people to work together successfully. But when we ask the teams we lead to be respectful, I wonder if we’re aiming too low. Shouldn’t we be asking for more?

Are we just settling for “avoiding conflict and tension?” Are we missing an opportunity to teach those we lead that respect is the minimum standard for workplacebehavior, and that there is so much more?

Respect is incredibly important. In the quest to create workplaces where people can find meaning and do their best work, I believe that we need to aim much higher. We need to teach people what it means to genuinely care about others and support their success. We need to show them how to be in service in the world. That’s real ethical leadership. Are you aiming high enough?

We create organizational culture through strategic choices and daily actions. If we imagine building our culture as creating an elaborate painting, what will we depict on the canvas? Will we work together to carefully paint a background theme of positive values, or will we just give everyone brushes and “see where it goes?”

The graphic shows ethical leadership as a human performance system. At the center of the system are Positive Ethical Values and Trust. The arrows show a perpetual process of communicating and reinforcing values and ethical choices.

Having seen this model, ask yourself these questions to assess how well ethical values are “painted” onto your cultural canvas:

Questions

1. If a group of strangers walked into our organization for the first time and spent the day with us, what would they say is on our cultural canvas? What values would they see in action?

2. What positive ethical values do we make the focal point of our culture?

3. How will we “paint” those values in a lasting way onto the canvas of our culture?

4. How will we build the deep level of trust that is necessary for open conversation?

5. How will we align all of our messages and reward systems to aim directly toward the ethical values we say are important?

6. How will we prepare leaders to paint ethical values onto our cultural canvas through their daily leadership?

7. How will we know when everyone in the organization is committed to our values? What will we see happening?

When we communicate clear values and make trust a priority, we are creating positive conditions for:

making a lasting difference

bringing out the best in the organization

protecting our ethics

When our cultural canvas is clearly painted with ethical values and trust, the result may be a true masterpiece – an ethical organization.

2014Axiom Business Book Award Winner About 7 LensesUnleash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership™

Monday I received the wonderful news that I was in the Trust Across America-Trust Around the World2015 Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trust.I consider this a great honor because trust is critical to successful business. Trust improves communication, culture, performance, engagement and results.

Today I’m sharing some inspiring quotes from recent trust reports about why “it’s all about the trust” – why trust has such broad importance and impact in work relationships and organizations:

“Gaining trust from society at large also requires understanding what value means to a wider range of stakeholders than many companies are used to—including not just shareholders, but customers, employees, local community members, government officials, and others.”

“Well-being promotes the greater business good and what’s good for the individual is good for the organization and its customers. Because of this, an organization needs to think about the work experience from their employees’ point of view and consider whether policies, structures and workplace culture are adding to their well-being or detracting from it.”

Justin Heifitz, Gallup Business Journal, December 15, 2014

“80 percent of respondents said that they chose to buy a particular product or servicebecause they trusted the company behind it. Sixty-three percent said they refused to purchase a product or service because they distrusted a particular company.”

Edelman Trust Barometer 2015, Executive Summary

“By focusing on building trust, companies can develop a compelling identity, one that sets them apart from competitors—assuming that they have the intent to deliver and the capabilities to do so.”

“For their part, senior leaders need to invest in systems, rewards, and habits that make it easy for managers faced with complexity and constant change to make solid commitments, connect the dots with other groups, and remember their promises. This is how thriving businesses create an upward spiral of trust and strong results.”

Elizabeth Doty, Does Your Company Keep Its Promises? strategy+business, July 18, 2014

In every dimensions of success, from employee engagement to stakeholder confidence to customer retention, building successful organizations really is all about the trust.

When we want to prepare leaders for success in the trenches of business leadership, we don’t get very far by providing a cushy “spa-like experience.” We can easily focus too much on creating “events” for leader education and miss the much deeper preparation that leaders need.

What prepares leaders to handle their tough everyday challenges? Their success requires much more than knowledge building. It requires rewiring mindsets and developing new capacities. The best way to do that is through experiences that lead to real human growth. Leadership development should stretch leaders and help them develop the capacity to handle bigger challenges. These recent reports describe the need for leaders to stretch into new capabilities:

Nick Petrie of the Center For Creative Leadership notes that “This is no longer just a leadership challenge (what good leadership looks like); it is a development challenge (the process of how to grow “bigger” minds). (Future Trends in Leadership Development, CCL.org)

The Wall Street Journal article “How to Develop Future Leaders” says that “Stretch assignments are growth-oriented exercises with some inherent risk. They’re designed to push participants past their skill level.”

We are preparing leaders to handle a high degree of complexity and we need for them to consistently make ethical choices. At its best, leadership development is not an “event.” It’s a capacity-building endeavor. It’s a process of human growth and development.

Leaders must become capable of imagining more, doing and being more, and enabling others to accomplish more in challenging times. Only human growth will get them there.

There were 52 Leading in Context blog posts published in 2014. The ones listed below are the 10 that were most popular with readers. They are focused on learning proactive ethical leadership and building a high-trust culture. If I had to describe a theme that connects these posts it might be “learning how to keep up with changes in ethical leadership expectations.”

As you review these reader favorites, think about how you will adapt to changing ethical leadership expectations in 2015.

The graphics at the links below tellthe storyof the future of responsible leadership. They describe the kind of leadership that is respectful, caring and ethically aware. This is the positive leadership that engages employees in meaningful work and helps builds an ethical culture.

My hope is that you will share this story with your leadership team and plan now for the future, using the questions that follow.

The kind of leadership described in these graphics doesn’t just happen on its own. It requires intentional ongoing preparation by individual leaders and organizations. 2015 is almost here. Use these questions to develop your plans for meeting the future prepared for success:

Individual Questions

1. How well does my leadership measure up to the leadership described in these graphics?

2. What are the most important changes I need to make now to be ready?

3. How will I be accountable for making those changes and what support will I need to make them?

Organizational Questions

1. How well does our organizational leadership match up with this vision of the leadership of the future?

2. What are the most important changes we need to make now to be ready then?

3. How will we make those changes in a way that ensures that the change is deeply rooted and not superficial?

Customers are not separate from businesses any more – they are becoming part of the fabric of organizations in ways that meet their very specific needs. This week I describe 5 powerful trends in ethical consumerism that are changing the rules of business. To keep up with these trends, leaders will need a heightened level of ethical awareness and the ability to think ethically on many levels.

1. Customers want companies to build ethics into their brands.

“In the pursuit of the nirvana that is GUILT-FREE CONSUMPTION, consumers are looking for brands to make SACRIFICES (so they don’t have to).”

These are powerful consumer trends that will drive business success in 2015 and beyond. This is the terrain of business leadership future, and it requires heightened ethical awareness and proactive ethical leadership. Get ready for business conversations that integrate ethics into all aspects of product development, customer service, marketing and leadership.

•

Business is changing. Let us know how Leading in Context can help you prepare. Info@LeadinginContext.com

“thought-provoking” “fresh” “powerful” “relevant”

Bring proactive ethical leadership to life with the 7 Lenses™book and Workshops

This week the Alliance of Trustworthy Business Experts from Trust Across America-Trust Around the World is holding a social media awareness campaign called #Trustgiving2014, In support of that campaign, I am featuring 10 posts about what it means to be a trustworthy leader. They include individual actions and organizational commitments that build trust. I hope you enjoy them!

Last week I wrote abouthow to prepare for leadership future by staying centered in ethical values. Grounding our work in values is critically important but it’s not enough. There’s much more to being ready for the future of leadership than just staying aligned with positive values. This week I’m sharing agraphic about5 other variables that need to be in place to build apositive ethical culture – the propertime orientation, focus, response, level and complexity.

We believe that ethics, integrity and trust are critical to our success.

…But what are we doing to clarify them, to anchor our work to them, to teach our organizations how to apply them?

It would be “easy […] for organizations and leaders to become frozen by the magnitude of the changes under way” (McKinsey & Co., Management Intuition For the Next 50 Years). Success in future leadership requires being nimble and adaptive, flexing with constant change, and being ready for anything.

How should we stay grounded as we avoid crises and manage our way through a maze of increasing expectations?

Without a place to stand where we know what we believe, without a center to which we can return, we are adrift and at risk from the strong winds of short-sighted opportunism and unethical leadership.

Our center needs to be firmly grounded in values.

Without attaching ourselves to ethical values, we risk being swept toward the next shiny, compelling opportunity that presents itself (but is ethically the wrong thing to do).

We are assaulted with information (overloaded doesn’t begin to describe it) and desperately searching for meaning.

To thrive as leaders in this unpredictable future, we need to create meaning for ourselves and those we lead in the form of ethical values. Those values which we hold tightly will guide us as we make difficult decisions. They will help us avoid mistakes.

Values will guide us and those we lead through difficult times.

Without ethical values to guide us, we can forget who we are creating value for, and what our responsibilities are to our constituents. To thrive in leadership future, we need to tether ourselves to ethical values and hold on for dear life as the storm rages on.

We believe that ethics, integrity and trust are critical to our success.

…But what are we doing to clarify them, to tether our work to them, to teach our organizations how to apply them?

To build a strong ethical culture, leaders should take a positive, preventive approach to ethics. That would include communicating clear ethical values and expectations and quickly stopping any unethical behavior. But those things are not enough by themselves. There are cultural factors that either enable our prevention efforts or disable them. Understanding these factors helps us build an ethical culture. Here are three enabling factors (that support proactive ethics) and three numbing factors (that disable our proactive ethics efforts).

Numbing Factors

Numbing factors act as an ethical dampening field, disabling the natural systems that would prevent and identify ethical risks. The presence of any of these factors numbs people to proactive ethics, and makes it harder for people to want to protect the organization’s ethical reputation.

Enabling Factors

Enabling factors act as ethical boosters, fueling the natural systems that prevent and identify ethical risks. The presence of any of them boosts the organization toward proactive ethics, and makes it easier to prevent ethical problems from happening.

ENABLING FACTORS

Proactive Values-Based Leadership

Trust-Building (Including Showing Respect and Care)

“Safe Space” to Talk About Ethical Issues

Which Way is Your Organization Headed?

By cultivating enabling factors, you are setting the stage for the team to work together, actively protecting the organization’s ethics. If you have numbing factors within your organization, be aware that the dampening field that they create will reduce the effectiveness of your positive ethics efforts.

“Ethical culture” is a complex system. To support the health of the system, maximize enabling factors and eliminate numbing factors.

Follow the Leading in Context Blog for weekly posts that help you Unleash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership™

We need money to exchange goods and services, pay bills and grow our businesses. So what’s the problem with it? The problem is that profitability cannot become our defining business goal, and it cannot replace values as the central beacon of our decision-making.

Money has no inherent moral grounding.

Since it has no inherent moral grounding, we can’t ever let money be the deciding factor in our decision-making. We have to balance the quest for dollars with strong ethical values. It is this moral grounding that ensures that we will consider how our decisions benefit or harm others. Making profitability a singular goal leaves an organization stuck in self-serving mode.

In self-serving mode, anything that brings in dollars looks good.

A focus on money alone causes leaders to plod on, as if wearing blinders, ignoring unintended consequences and harm.

We can’t put money where morality should be.

Have you ever lived in a house constructed by a builder who saved fifty cents by using a cheaper part, and that “savings” interfered with your enjoyment of your home or cost you major repair problems? How do you feel about food companies that choose the cheapest ingredients without regard to the health impact of the products they sell? The self-serving pursuit of profit doesn’t work in today’s world. People expect much more.

Ethical leaders care for constituents (not just profits).

Money lacks inherent meaning and ethical values. It is just a token of exchange. It is our responsibility to add the ethical values.

Follow the Leading in Context Blog for weekly posts that help you Unleash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership™

We owe it to our employees to make ethics real. People learning ethics are often given “blah blah boring” material (and then expected to remember and apply it). I believe that this is not just a mistake, it’s a crime! Why? Because ethics is anything but boring. Ethics is really interesting stuff when you dive into its complexities.

Today I’m sharing 5 ways to talk about ethics without being “blah blah boring.” Feel free to use these as conversation starters with your teams, and let me know if they make your conversations more meaningful.

1. Ethics is human

Ethics is inherently human. It focuses on how broadly we consider our impact on others and honor their well-being. And “others” doesn’t just include our coworkers and customers. We have an ethical responsibility to many “others, ” even some who we may never meet.

How can we bring ethics to life in our conversations as a human responsibility – a responsibility to do good and avoid harm for an ever-broadening array of “others?”

2. Ethics is positive

Ethics is not just laws, regulations or ethics codes. Those are simply safety nets to keep us on the positive (and legal) side of ethics. Ethics is really about high level positive values like respect and care, service and sustainability.

How can we stop fixating on the safety nets, and start talking more about the positive values?

3. Ethics is multidimensional

There are hundreds of different terms used to describe ethics, and many angles from which to approach it. There’s personal ethics (integrity and character), interpersonal ethics (respect and care), environmental ethics (respect for life and sustainability) and societal ethics (supporting communities and the greater good). Add professional ethics (codes for each profession) and organizational ethical culture to the mix too.

How can we talk about the dimensions of what really matters in ethics instead of giving people oversimplified statements like “always do the right thing?”

4. Ethics is a system

Not only is ethics multidimensional, it’s also systemic. Building an ethical culture requires the alignment of many different aspects of ethics including expectations, communication and full accountability.

How can we help our leaders learn how to build an ethical high-trust culture where people can do their best work?

5. Ethics is a learning journey

Not only are we all human, striving to meet increasing ethics expectations as part of an organizational system, we’re also at different stages in our ethical development. We’re all learning. The very human challenges are for us to learn fast enough to keep up, and to aim high enough to act on values.

How can we bring ethics to life by talking about it as an ongoing learning journey toward positive values, rather than as a training event, a problem or a set of rules?

Boring ethics content will not get your organization where it needs to go. It may put people to sleep, or cause them to “check out” in future ethics conversations. Don’t settle for weak, oversimplified or vague messages as the scaffolding for your organization’s ethics. People need clear messages that are relevant and that help them deal with complexity. There’s too much at stake to rely on “blah blah boring.”

Follow the Leading in Context Blog for weekly posts that help you Unleash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership™

Using the Profit Lens, we see what is “Good” in a money sense. Good means what is good for economic growth, good for income growth, and good for organizational growth.

2 – Law

Using the Law Lens, we see what is “Good” in a legal sense. Good means following all laws and regulations.

3 – Character

Using the Character Lens, we see what is “Good” in a morally grounded sense. Good means demonstrating character and integrity, and showing a high degree of moral awareness.

4 – People

Using the People Lens, we see what is “Good” for people’s well-being. Good means supporting people’s success and bringing out their best.

5 – Communities

Using the Communities Lens, we see what is “Good” for the health and well-being of communities. Good is what supports thriving families and provides needed community services.

6 – Planet

Using the Planet Lens, we see what is “Good” for the planet and nature. Good means protecting plants, wildlife and natural lands, and treating the planet and ecosystems that we depend on for our lives with care.

7 – Greater Good

Using the Greater Good Lens, we see what is “Good” in the broadest sense, at the highest level, for the longest-term. Good is what creates a peaceful, global society where people can thrive.

Which of these 7 Lenses do you use in your daily leadership? Hint: They’re all important for intentional ethical leadership.

Follow the Leading in Context Blog for weekly posts that help Unleash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership™

For more, see 7 Lenses (foreword by Stephen M. R. Covey). This practical guide to the future of ethical leadership takes us well beyond the triple bottom line to 7 different perspectives on ethical leadership, and provides 14 Guiding Principles that help us honor them all in daily leadership.